Page 121 of The Exquisite Torment of Loving Your Enemy
“Honestly, good,” yawned Fairhrim. “I’d like a tin of those sweets.”
“Can’t help you,” said Ruain. “My Druid contact’s gone missing; those are all I’ve got left. We’re almost at the isle. How long do you need down there?”
“A few hours at most,” said Fairhrim.
“Right. I’m taking theFarewellup past this storm after I’ve dropped you off. Send your deofol when you’re ready. I’ll bring you down as close as I can. I’m not going to land in these winds. Use the ladder.”
Osric pushed the hatch open, and Fairhrim rolled out a rope ladder, which whipped sideways in the wind. They descended inelegantly and dropped onto a beach.
The leycraft scooted off like an airborne crab and swept upwards.
Osric and Fairhrim stood ankle-deepin salt water on a flat beach. The Isle of Stígr was hardly an island, more like a sandbar. The water was warm.
“Well,” said Osric as Ruain and his leycraft disappeared into the clouds, “I hope your deofol can find him again, or we’re properly fucked.”
“What time is it?”
Osric made a show of using the pocket watch she’d given him. “Half eleven, minus the quarter hour.”
Fairhrim noticed and looked pleased. “Healing’s at midnight. We’ve got a bit of time to explore.”
A little way up the beach, they found a wooden structure, perhaps used by long-ago fishermen, which Fairhrim generously called a hut. Sheremoved her cloak, as well as her stockings and boots, and left them upon the sandy floor. Osric followed suit.
They walked along the beach barefoot, Fairhrim with her skirts hitched up, Osric in shirtsleeves and braces, to where a long spur of sand jutted into the sea. The beach undulated away to the left and to the right, a line between here and the infinite. Shells dotted the sand like small moons.
Thunder rumbled in the distance. Fairhrim shuddered. “That storm is on the way. But at least we’re here. Five ley lines cross near here. And as for your precious Widdershins, his note for the Thunor moon said,Waves draw you under.”
“Dear Widdershins,” said Osric. “It seems so long ago that he cast spittle in my eye.”
“I hope he’s all right,” said Fairhrim. “If this healing goes as well as I think it will, I’m going to write an article about this experience. And I’m going to try to clear his name.”
“Is tonight going to be it?” asked Osric. “The last healing?”
“I hope so,” said Fairhrim.
In the face of his prolonged silence, she asked, “Don’t you?”
Osric should have wanted it to be the last healing. But he didn’t. On the contrary, he almost hoped it wouldn’t work. His hope had been inverted, turned inside out and back to front. Then he could be with her for another five, ten, twenty moons. For all the moons he had left.
He looked down. So translucent was the water that it seemed as though they were stepping through something else: some briny, otherworldly quintessence in which silver fish drifted.
Perhaps it was a night for transparency.
“If this is the last time, we won’t be seeing each other much anymore, will we?” he asked.
Fairhrim looked soft in the cloud-diffused light. “That was always the objective, wasn’t it?”
“Then we’re hurtling towards one of your inevitable goodbyes.”
“Yes,” said Fairhrim. “You should be pleased. It’ll mean successagainst all the odds. But,” she added with typical Fairhrim scepticism, “we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Results first. Come on. It’s nearly midnight.”
“Where shall we stand?”
“Between,” said Fairhrim.
They stepped into the shallows until the water reached their knees. They watched midnight tick closer upon the golden heart pocket watch.
Fairhrim asked, “Well—shall we see if we’re wasting our time again?”
